


Nothing's Gonna Hurt You Baby

by Highsmith (quimtessence)



Category: Atomic Blonde (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Queer Character of Color, Character Death Fix, Character Study, Developing Relationship, F/F, Fix-It, Yuletide 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:40:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28240299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quimtessence/pseuds/Highsmith
Summary: She wakes up on a bed that isn't her own and in a room she doesn't recognise.
Relationships: Lorraine Broughton/Delphine Lasalle
Comments: 12
Kudos: 40
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Nothing's Gonna Hurt You Baby

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosecake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecake/gifts).



> Title from Cigarettes After Sex.

_"He set us both up."_

"I know his secrets," she said, a last chance attempt to stop Lorraine in her tracks.

And it did.

*

She wakes up on a bed that isn't her own and in a room she doesn't recognise. Then again, that's not much different than what she's been doing lately as her life hasn't exactly been the usual for some time now. There's only so much you can do, so much you can expect. But she has to admit she wasn't expecting this, because, from her place on the bed, outside of the windows she can see the sky is just starting to clear onto the London skyline, recognisable even in her half-asleep state.

She doesn't startle when Lorraine appears at the door leading to what she can only assume is a bathroom or lavatory of some sort, or maybe another room like this one, spacious and lighting up with the dawn.

A quick glance about them leads her to assume this must be a guest bedroom, anonymous. Beneath the pale sheets she's only in her underwear, but the bruises and cuts provide a strange feverish ache as they heal.

"You're awake." It might be the early hour, but Lorraine sounds grave and remote.

Delphine doesn't exactly have a lot of words to offer up, but she does manage, "Yes."

"All right."

She's in a white bathrobe, not particularly outrageously comfortable-looking, not like Delphine would have thought such things would look when one had the luxury of money to spend on such frivolities. This entire room screams minimalist frivolity. But perhaps that sort of thing is merely a façade, never meant to be accessible to people like them in the first place, because, after all, it looks like something that serves its purpose well, and, in a way, fits Lorraine's utilitarian sensibilities even if not her style completely.

"How long have I been asleep?" Her throat hurts.

It's not this particular question she had in mind to ask, but it is what it is now, it has to be asked, to know how long she's been out.

"A day, a little less. Does it matter?"

"I'm surprised I'm awake at all."

Which is probably what she should have brought up, but we're here now.

"It wasn't easy," Lorraine says, eyebrow cocked for emphasis.

She can't help it. "But how?"

Lorraine walks over to the dresser to grab a cigarette and lights it up efficiently. Through the smoke blowing about her, she repeats. "It wasn't easy."

Delphine considers asking once more, prodding, trying to find answers, but she has a feeling there aren't any that she'll get that will satisfy her given whom it is she's talking to. An inkling that there is another time and place for all that quiets that line of inquiry, but she can't stop herself from asking instead, "What's going to happen now?"

For a long time, maybe a minute that's equally an unending one, Lorraine smokes and watches her from the edge of the room. She doesn't seem like she's heard, there's no reaction that isn't that intense stare, that blank one that has within it imbued a level of interest that Delphine now knows is pure charm on the side of Lorraine as a spy, the idea that she can turn eyes on anyone and have them under her spell, but isn't denoting actual interest. A mosquito might get it.

"You can't go about as you'd like. For a while. You shouldn't be alive most likely."

No empathy spared, but Delphine doesn't need any where facts are concerned. She shifts the covers around to sit up to hug her knees. She feels tired, floating, perhaps not really here.

"Am I going to get an answer?" She smiles. It feels sad on her face, but she doesn't know why that might be the case when it's probable she's still in shock that they managed to get themselves safely away from Berlin. She should be happy, if anything, even though everything went to shit.

"A lot of people are going to want a lot of answers from me in a little while. I have to report."

Delphine's heart starts pumping in her chest.

"What are you going to say?"

Lorraine finishes her cigarette and stumps it out onto the dresser, just directly onto it, no care at all. There's grey charcoal left behind on the pristine white. Delphine draws the sheets closer to her body. At the same time she realises she's a little cold snippets of the day before start trickling in. Their planning. Delphine's impulsive plea. Lorraine's unearned trust. How wrong it could have all gone if they hadn't changed course.

The other side of the bed looks unslept on and Lorraine looks as if she hasn't seen a pillow in far too long.

"Nothing about you. You're alive." She sighs and glances around the room for a long time, then adds, "I was hoping you would like to remain in that state." She doesn't crack a smile and Delphine doesn't think there's anything funny either. She shivers.

Which doesn't make a lot of sense on why she's half-way to bursting into laughter. A hysterical note of fear in her belly.

And then, watching Lorraine watch her, she feels herself starting to giggle until it's a hysterical thing indeed, a muscle unclenching in her chest, something horrid that she can't stop until it finally stops just as suddenly as it started.

"I'm all right," she manages.

Lorraine disappears and comes back and she dresses and leaves, no more words exchanged, nothing else that helps Delphine get her bearings, but she waits until the door closes behind Lorraine with an ominous click, then she gets out of bed and goes in search of coffee or water or something comforting in liquid form that might also quench her thirst.

She feels as if she hasn't moved in a week and was in a hurricane before that. It's not exactly shocking, but her body isn't thanking her for it and she feels every single one of her muscles and bones and perhaps her marrow as well throbbing duly.

She looks into a mirror, finally, as she sips at very good coffee. She looks a mess. It's not surprising in any way whatsoever, but the price is what it is.

She doesn't feel hungry, which might be because of the aches, which kick in the more she moves around, but she knows she should get something inside her stomach. Lorraine didn't say she should make herself at home or anything trite like that, but she isn't sure Lorraine would appreciate it if she passes out in the middle of her house either.

But then she finds she's going to sleep again, her body processing the coffee, but not willing to stay awake.

At some point night comes, and she hears or feels Lorraine walk in, and normally she might sink back into the bed rather than lean into consciousness, but the coffee didn't help the thirst. By the time she wobbles out of bed she finds Lorraine is fixing them food of some description, and then there's plates in front of them on a table and a glass of water next to Delphine's hand, who is now sitting down to eat having stumbled herself over on shaky legs without much input from her brain. Lorraine has turned on the bright lights above, so it's not a candlelit dinner by any stretch.

"What now?" The food is either delicious or she's on the point of starvation.

"I'm on leave and planning to start the new decade... alive." She lights another cigarette. Smoke envelops her once more. Envelops _them_. "How does that sound?"

Delphine has questions. Delphine has a lot of questions. But no one is kicking their door in. No one is coming for her.

They eat. They sleep. They fuck.

Before the "decade" can properly start they have a date in Paris. Well, Lorraine does. She takes care of business ( _"I have to come in from the Cold sooner or later."_ ) while Delphine waits in the lobby of the hotel.

There is a plane which should take her home—not London, not any part of England, Delphine finds out—but Lorraine negotiates two seats on it and a blank slate, a new passport. Delphine doesn't trust the Americans ( _"Nor should you. We're a bunch of bastards. The CIA's rotten to the core, maggots all the way through._ ), but Lorraine has loyalties and a yoke she hasn't yet found a way to shake off.

It's probably a bad idea. In fact, Delphine is certain it's the worst idea, but she's been in over her head since the beginning, and, she finds out soon enough, France is willing to loan her out indefinitely to the Americans as long as she's somebody else's problem.

If Lorraine is willing to make her Lorraine's problem then it's almost all right.

**Author's Note:**

> ETA 2021/01/01 My Tumblr: [rhubarbdreams](https://rhubarbdreams.tumblr.com/)


End file.
